LangaList, May 1, 2006

Very Cool Tweak: The OS Hidden Inside The OS

Windows XP's Recovery Console is a good but very limited tool.

By default, it restricts you to working in just a few system folders, refusing you access to any other part of your hard drive. It prevents you from using "wildcards" (such as "*.exe" to represent all files ending in "exe"). It won't let you copy files to removable media such as floppies. And you're always prompted when overwriting each and any file.

Fortunately, a simple tweak that can be performed in under a minute removes all those restrictions and frees up Recovery Console to let you work anywhere on the hard drive; to access and use removable media such as floppies; to use wildcards to work on large groups of files or folders at once; and more.

With this tweak, Recovery Console becomes, in effect, a general-purpose XP DOS, serving much the same function as did DOS boot floppies for earlier versions of Windows. With the Recovery Console's limitations removed, you can then access any file or folder anywhere on your hard drive and run any of some 34 DOS-like commands.

And again, these commands will now work ANYWHERE on the hard drive--- not just in a the few folders that Recovery Console normally restricts you to.

With this tweak, the Recovery Console really does become a kind of lightweight XP DOS--a much more powerful, all-purpose mini-operating system, making it enormously more useful than otherwise.

Full info, including a how-to to implement the tweak:
http://www.informationweek.com/story/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=187000225

Click on over!